


Zero Opportunity

by Tarlan



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Character Study, Community: mcsheplets, Episode Related, Episode: s01e04 38 Minutes, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-24
Updated: 2008-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-21 20:09:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the clock ticks down, Rodney refuses to give up on them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zero Opportunity

**Author's Note:**

> **McSheplets** prompt 03: Cold

He didn't know Sheppard all that well. Oh, they had played around a bit when Rodney found that Ancient personal shield, having fun placing him into possible peril and watching the bullets bounce off the green-glowing shield. Sheppard was a big kid and, he guessed, maybe he was a big kid too. Certainly, he couldn't recall having had so much fun in his life before then, not even as a child back in Canada.

This wasn't fun though.

He paused for a moment and stared into the blue of the event horizon, shivering once from a coldness that had little to do with temperature, aware that everything he did could just as easily backfire on them as save them. He'd already warned Elizabeth not to hesitate if he told her to raise the Stargate shield, unwilling to risk a catastrophic overload destroying half of Atlantis. Yet even that was forgotten as he heard the defibrillator power up, he turned and saw the look of determination cross Sheppard's face.

"Do it!"

For vital seconds he stood and watched like a ghoul at a train wreck, only flinching when the bug finally let go of Sheppard's neck and Teyla lobbed it away. He flinched again as the gunshots resounded in the small compartment, swallowing hard as the creature's blood and guts splattered up the wall and across the bench seat. He stayed frozen to the spot as Ford attempted to resuscitate Sheppard, and failed. Rodney knew he ought to be searching for that manual override but, until this moment, he hadn't realized how much he had come to like Sheppard, how much he had enjoyed his occasional company in the mess hall, or his input during Elizabeth's interminably boring staff meetings. He come to look forward to Sheppard's visits to the laboratory, ostensibly as a human light switch, but he invariably brightened Rodney's day.

It didn't seem fair that he'd only just realized this and now Sheppard was dead, or as good as dead, before he'd ever be given the opportunity to truly get to know the man and see if there could have been more between them.

Rodney supported one side of Sheppard's body as Teyla slipped in behind the dead man, almost unable to let go of Sheppard's arm as she stepped back into the event horizon, taking Sheppard with her. Every cell in his body screamed at him to step through too, to take away all the fear of dying by explosive decompression when the Stargate shut down and severed the Puddlejumper, exposing them to the cold, hard vacuum of space. As an astrophysicist, he knew everything he ever needed to know about explosive decompression, how gases in the body would expand, the pressure closing down the blood circulatory system, starving the brain of oxygen. At least he knew he'd be dead within a minute but it still sounded like a painful way to spend the last 12 to 15 conscious seconds of his life. Better to step into the event horizon and just cease to exist in seven minutes.

He couldn't do it though. He couldn't give up on them all, on Sheppard, determined to work until the very last second, but Ford didn't need to suffer with him.

"You should consider stepping into the event horizon."

Of course, Ford had to go and remind him that they still had the alien bug on-board, and Rodney felt a moment of panic. Dying by explosive decompression and suffocation was bad enough, but he didn't want to have to factor in the extreme pain that Sheppard had described from being attacked by that creature.

Time was running out and he still had so many pathways to test. Even though the Czech scientist was starting from the other end, testing out 500 circuits apiece in such a short space of time was nigh-near impossible and if he had been a religious man then he would be praying right now that the pathway they needed wasn't right in the middle. It didn't help that Elizabeth was acting like a clock, counting down the final minutes of his life while making useless suggestions that...

He jerked his head up as he heard the unmistakable sound of the drive pods retracting, and the almost buoyant feel of the Puddlejumper freeing, but his triumph was short lived when another immutable law of physics hit like a cold shower. They had shed all their forward momentum and there was no time left to find an alternative means of propulsion.

"Blow the rear hatch." Kavanagh, of all people, made his first useful suggestion since they had arrived on Atlantis, and Rodney's quick mental calculation confirmed that it was possible, though only just, but it was all they had left.

As Ford pushed him along the compartment, Rodney tried to give instructions but the last thought that crossed his mind as he was shoved across the event horizon was that Sheppard would be waiting for him on the other side.

END


End file.
